Ciattarelli has big lead, Dem field more unsettled in Rutgers gubernatorial poll

A Rutgers-Eagleton poll released this morning – the first independent head-to-head poll of New Jersey’s gubernatorial primaries since January – finds Republicans with a clear frontrunner for their party’s nomination while Democrats remain heavily divided among six candidates.

According to the poll, which was in the field in early April, former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R-Somerville) is well-positioned to claim his second Republican gubernatorial nomination in a row, aligning with several previous polls released by Ciattarelli and his allies.

Ciattarelli earns the support of 42% of Republican-leaning voters, far ahead of his chief opponent, radio host Bill Spadea, who gets 12%. State Sen. Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), the field’s only explicitly anti-Trump Republican, gets 4%; Justin Barbera, a little-known contractor, gets 3%; and former Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mario Kranjac gets all of 0%. Another 34% of respondents said they’re undecided.

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) holds a lead – much like in every other poll of the race that’s been released so far – but it’s a small one. Sherrill has 17% of the vote to Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop’s 12% and New Jersey Education Association President Sean Spiller’s 10%; Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka are tied at 9%, and former State Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) rounds out the field with 7%. 32% of Democratic-leaning respondents were undecided.

In the more than one dozen surveys, most of them internal polls, released of the Democratic primary thus far, Sherrill has been at the front of the pack in all of them. The polls, though, have differed on how big the congresswoman’s lead is – and on which of her five opponents is best-positioned to overtake her.

“We currently have a tale of two primaries,” Rutgers-Eagleton poll director Ashley Koning said in a release accompanying her poll. “On the Republican side, a leading candidate is coming into focus, while on the Democratic side, there is no clear frontrunner, given that most of the Democratic candidates are within striking distance of one another.”

The poll also found that, among the wider electorate, none of the candidates are hugely well-known or well-liked. Sherrill has the best favorability ratings in the field at 20% favorable, 14% unfavorable; in fact, she’s the only candidate from either party that the poll found to have a net-favorable rating. Fulop’s favorability ratio is 12%-12%, Gottheimer is at 18%-19%, Baraka is at 15%-16%, Spiller is at 14%-17%, Bramnick is at 6%-8%, Ciattarelli is at 18%-24%, Sweeney is at 13%-21%, and Spadea is the furthest underwater at 8%-18%. (Barbera and Kranjac were not included.)

“Though not necessarily unusual at this stage in the game, candidates on both sides of the aisle still lack name recognition from a notable number of voters, and no candidate on either side of the aisle is viewed favorably by more than one in five voters,” Koning said.

Importantly, though, those favorability ratings are among all registered voters, not just members of the candidates’ respective parties. For now, with the primary still ahead, all that really matters to candidates on both sides is how popular they are among their own voters – and all would likely post better favorability ratings among those respondents.

The Democratic field could remain in flux through primary day on June 10, when voters will go to the polls to nominate candidates for governor, State Assembly, and local offices. All six candidates have plenty of money to spend on their campaigns, and most have formidable voter bases that could lead them to victory.

The Republican primary, though, might be settled by one man: Donald Trump. Both Ciattarelli and Spadea have actively angled for the president’s endorsement, and today’s Rutgers-Eagleton poll shows why; 46% of Republican-leaning respondents said that they would be more likely to vote for a Trump-endorsed candidate, versus just 7% who said they would be less likely.

The Rutgers-Eagleton poll was conducted from April 1-10 with a sample size of 966 registered New Jersey voters and a margin of error of +/- 4.3%. The poll’s Republican-leaning subsample consisted of 258 respondents, and its Democratic-leaning subsample consisted of 556 respondents; margins of error were not provided for these subsamples.